Have you ever thought of something from your imagination that you never thought would happen and then it happened?
For me, there was the time when I imagined that one day there would be personal computers for every student in the classroom and used to hand in assignments or check for grade reports. This was the 1990s, and I was a little kid at the time. Guess what? My dream had been realized! Nowadays, there are really personal computers in the classroom! Obviously, not in every classroom. But still, it’s pretty neat that there are these digital classrooms that take place in a physical location, but the students would do their schoolwork on personal computers.
There was also the time when I based my imagination from what I read in Riding Freedom, by Pam Munoz Ryan. I read the book in elementary school, and I imagined what would happen if the main character’s life had been different. What would happen if the main character did not transform herself into a boy? Then, that made me think of sexual exploitation and abuse, and I created the imagery in my mind of many men tying up one woman and sexually playing with her. More than a decade later, I found out about 50 Shades of Grey and BDSM, and I became appalled that some people had similar ideas of deriving sexual pleasure from pain!
In the 1980s, my uncle and I used to joke about outlandish, pointless technology. One idea we came up with was a machine that could show you an image of the place you are standing in. It was funny, because who would need a picture of where they are? You can just open your eyes and look around.
Well, thats actually one of the less pointless things my phone now does.
Oh yes. When I was a kid in the 70’s I thought how cool it would be to remote control small radio controlled fighter aircraft and maybe it would soot BB’s or something at other remote controlled aircraft. And I could do it from my house.
Heh. I can control full armies now if I wanted on my computer.
The other thing happened around 1991. Got laid of in Colorado and visited my Dad. Wrote software for a family business in Illinois. It took 6 weeks. Thank god I left.
Had some ideas about software I wrote in ILL and wanted to move to the Colorado mountains. I already had a base in Denver. That worked out quite well. Still here, except up quite a bit. Give me altitude baby. That’s what I like.
Heh. I know that within the last decade, I sneeringly mocked some poor schmuck in Great Debates, telling him that his idea of pot being legalized in the US in the next several decades was little more than a pipe dream. Oops.
I cannot tell you how much dentistry has changed since the 1950s. Every time I go I always cheer up the techs and the dentist by exclaiming “O my goodness, this is so much better than the 60s!” They are always delighted.
The only thing they need to work on is the horrible flavor of the pumice for polishing the teeth, and the new rapid setting mastic for impressions that tastes much,much,much worse than the old stuff.
When I was in the first grade, I wanted to have a magic book. You would just wish, and it would become whatever book you wanted it to be. There is no technology I appreciate more than my magic book, except maybe…
I used to imagine that if I were fabulously wealthy someday, I could go to the major T.V. networks and buy up the reruns of all of my favorite shows, so that I could watch them whenever I wanted. And I didn’t even have to become fabulously wealthy!
This one’s kind of the opposite of the OP, because I did think it would happen, and it’s taking longer than I thought:
In 1976, I was in a conversation about gays and lesbians, and someone said, “Well, I think it’s fine if they love each other, as long as they don’t want to get married or anything.” I thought, “That makes no sense. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t be able to marry. I bet that’s going to be the next great civil rights battle, and when I’m an adult gays and lesbians will have the right to marry.”
I am really, really not making this up:
Several weeks before Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared in March 2014, there was this thought that crossed my mind: An airliner from China, flying to California, simply vanishing off the radar screen over the Pacific. Not an explosion. Not a crash. Simply there one moment, then gone the next without explanation. And then, I thought of how the authorities would address the issue, stating to the media that it was an aviation mystery/accident that was just baffling.
And then, would you believe it - several weeks later, MH370 disappeared. There are some important differences, of course - MH370 was Malaysian, it was flying to China, not from China, and it is known that the airplane didn’t actually “vanish” - it did go on flying for hours, just to an unknown location. But it was very similar to the thought that crossed my mind several weeks before.
Back in the early 60s, when I had my first bf . . . one day I casually mentioned to him how wonderful it would be if gay men like us could get married and spend the rest of our lives together. He said “Dream on, that’ll never happen in our lifetimes.” I agreed. The possibility was unthinkable.
In the 70s and early 80s I was a big Steeler fan. One player in particular was my favorite, and it seemed like he always pulled off the impossible. I went to the Super Bowl victory parades, but never realized my dream of meeting the guy.
Fast forward twenty some years. He is retired and in the Hall of Fame. Pure coincidence leads to us meeting. Even more coincidental, we now have some strange things in common that lead to us becoming buddies.
Ha ha ha! I never dreamed of magic books when I was little, but I feel exactly the same about my Kindle. Especially since I have the type that looks like paper, it really feels like magic to me, more so than other technology that can do a lot more fancy stuff.
Getting married. It was something I thought about in my early 20s but thought would never happen, and to be frank, I didn’t see the point as I had absolutely no desire to have children. Then I met my wife and the deed was done. We never did have children, but that was by design.
The first. Somehow it always seemed like weed was going to find a way through the door but anything close to equality for gays (OK – we still got a distance to go for minorities and women, let alone gays, before we can relax) and marriage was always the “pie in the sky” that would never happen. Maybe in 2050 long after we’re dead but in our lifetime? Can’t happen.
Well, when I saw the first Nebula anthology and heard about the Science Fiction Writers of America, I thought it’d be neat to join. I figured it would never happen, but it eventually did.
In the 70s, I imagined I’d be rich enough to have a movie theater in my house, and the first film I’d have in my collection would be Citizen Kane. Eventually, I bought a VCR of it.
I didn’t dream about anything as lofty as many here, all I wanted was a smooth topped stove. I hated gas and was afraid of cleaning electric stoves so I wished that they would somehow make a stove that was smooth and easily cleaned. I saw the first one in a sears window in about 1976 or so. A couple of years later I owned one. I have only owned smooth surface stoves from then on, and love them. Now if they would only make an oven that was truly self cleaning removing even the ashes… And how about a self loading and unloading dish washer?
When I was a kid, there were three ways to gamble: 1) An illegal back-alley poker (or craps or whatever) game; 2) Semi-legal church-basement bingo (technically illegal, but the cops didn’t care, because church); 3) A trip to Las Vegas.
Now there are state lotteries, online gaming, and casinos in places I once though unimaginable (there are casinos in PEORIA, fer chrissake!).